


Space and Time and Thought

by Leyenn



Series: Dreams of Honest Horn [7]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e05 Where No One Has Gone Before, F/M, Imzadi, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, omg so canon compliant it's insane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 22:03:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: Where No One Has Gone Before.Betazoid mental discipline comes in unexpectedly handy, even when you're supposedly just doing engine tests.





	Space and Time and Thought

She's not surprised when Will asks quite so boldly to borrow her to meet Kosinski, even if he's perhaps still the only one who really knows what and why he's asking.

She's never seen him so argumentative with the Captain before. Even if she didn't know him so well, it would be easy to read how certain he is that he's right - but she does know him, and she knows it's not about right or wrong. Will's foremost concern is for the ship and the crew, and he's uneasy to the point of anger at anyone who might threaten that.

She sends a questioning _let's talk_ as he strides up the ramp beside her, and turns to him the moment the turbolift doors are closing.

"You think this Kosinski is hiding something." She doesn't make it a question. He sighs, leaning back against the side of the lift.

"I don't know, Deanna. It just doesn't make any sense." He runs a hand through his hair. "I might not be an engineer, but I know enough about warp theory to be pretty sure we've been sent a pile of crap dressed up in some fancy equations. And anything technical that _Data_ doesn't understand but some out-of-nowhere supposed expert claims to have come up with? It makes me nervous." She can tell he tries for some levity, but it comes out as a wince. "Not that I need to tell you that."

She doesn't bother to answer that with anything but a light mental touch, agreement and soothing wrapped up together. There's at least a little less tension in his shoulders as he straightens up. She stubbornly ignores the desire to reach up and massage more of it away.

Instead, she says, "Introduce me when he arrives, but try not to draw his attention too much to my presence. If you can manage to ask him about his work, that could help me get a clearer sense of what you want to know."

"Leave it to me." Will smiles tightly, but she can feel he's grateful - not just at having her expertise to hand, but that she understands.

She lets him do the talking - or Kosinski, since even though she's tuned it out to a faint buzz, she can hear the arrogance of the man not allowing him to relinquish the conversation for more than a moment. It's another tell of Will's level of frustration that he doesn't wait for her appraisal, and she imagines even a non-telepath would hear the disdain in his voice the minute both visitors are out of the room.

"One thing that Kosinski isn’t hiding is bad disposition."

"Agreed." The man's mind shouts his public persona so loudly it's left a faintly unpleasant aftertaste, and she tries to pick it apart in words. "Also he's arrogant, overbearing, self-important, and very sure of himself and his ability." She gives him a brief glimpse at the mental taste of it all, as much as she ever can, and he frowns.

"And the other one? His assistant?"

"He's the puzzle." She tries to find the right way to phrase that feeling, too, so that Will can understand. "With most life forms I can usually feel something. I may not be able to understand or interpret it, but I _feel_ something, if only a presence." Even with the Ferengi, it wasn't this complete a strangeness. "With him? Nothing. Empty space, as though he isn't even here." She's glad it's Will, so that she knows he understands too when she admits, "Something about this concerns me. I don't know what, I can point to no reason - yet."

"Stay concerned, please." At least he's relieved that she shares his unease. "The safety of the _Enterprise_ may be entrusted to these two."

 

*

 

It's impossible not to stay with Will when he's in this frame of mind, so she doesn't even try - which is how she knows, from his rising confusion and disbelief in the instant before Geordi says the impossible, that whatever's going on in Engineering is absolutely not as simple as either they _or_ Kosinski have imagined it would be.

And then they're at full stop, three lifetimes from home, and Will's thoughts are bordering on murderous.

_I'm bringing him up to the bridge._ His mind is vibrating with controlled anger. _Can you try and keep me from killing him before he explains what he did?_

She looks at the impossibility on the viewscreen. _I'll try. But only because I think we'd all like him to be able to do it again._

He didn't, in truth, need to tell her they were coming - she can feel that self-important, pompous arrogance getting closer even when they're still decks away. She's also forgotten already - the man is so overbearing - that no one else on the bridge has had the pleasure: when the man starts talking to their Captain, the outward wave of anger/displeasure/disbelief from everyone around her actually takes her off guard for a moment.

Will doesn't even bother to hide the look he gives her as Kosinski prattles on. _I_ am _going to strangle him._

After _we get home._

_Hm._ The look he shoots at the back of Kosinski's head should come from a phaser array. _Maybe._

She's not even sure he's pretending to be undecided.

 

*

 

"Perhaps we could call it the Kosinski scale," Argyle suggests, only just short of openly mocking.

He smirks at the tone - at least until Kosinski says, "Why not?" and he can't believe what he's actually hearing - which among other things, he's pretty sure, is Deanna openly rolling her eyes behind him.

_Oh, please._

_Coming round to my way of thinking?_

Her absolute disdain is like looking in a mirror. _How can one man can actually maintain_ that _much hubris?_

It's a good question, as is whether Kosinski realises how close he comes to a snapped neck when he decides rank is apparently _optional._ It's only the Captain's sharp reprimand and Deanna's quick pressure in his head that keeps him rooted to the spot.

"Counselor," Picard says.

Deanna looks calm enough, but he can tell she's not happy. "He's convinced he's right," she says, even though he can feel how the admission sticks in her throat. "I've no doubt of that."

_Something else?_

_There was. Just for a moment, but it was too quick. He's wholly invested in his own importance, there's no room for anything else._

He can feel her frustration, but he knows better than to push. If she works it out, she'll tell him, and she will work it out sooner or later.

 

*

 

She's never seen, never _felt_ anything like it. It's as if the whole of space is _thinking_ around her, but where such intensity should be overwhelming, this is so huge and nebulous it's almost… peaceful. It's the minds she knows that are sudden spots of chaos in the harmony - joy, fear, astonishment, pain, delight, random sparks of emotion that flare up and drop away without any pattern she can find, and she makes herself focus on them because they need her now.

But she can't hide from that indefinable sense of space she's never had before; that something so simple and yet so vast, it _aches_ that she'll never comprehend it.

 

*

 

"Deanna." Will doesn't even sit down as he reaches the center of the bridge, just makes a quick gesture toward the observation lounge. _I need to talk to you in private._

They could _talk in private_ right here, of course, but she knows that he needs to be able to react in private, too.

"People are seeing things," she says, two strides into the lounge, turning to him as soon as he walks in behind her. It's a statement and a recognition of what he's going to say, wrapped up together to save time.

He knows she's going to stop, of course. That's been one of the easiest things to come back to them, the shared proprioception of where they are and where they're going to be; the way he can read her unconscious projection of direction and intent and act on it without thinking. "Has anyone on the bridge-"

"Worf. Tasha. I couldn't tell the details, but it shook her more than he. I think everyone else is untouched so far."

"You haven't…"

She shakes her head. "I do have something of an advantage when it comes to controlling my thoughts," she says, almost teasing. "As do you." He's surprised at that, and that surprises her in return. "Did you think you were just unimaginative?"

"I guess I didn't think about it. As it were." The faint self-deprecation under his tone makes her smile.

"You're more skilled than you give yourself credit for. You always were," and she can't help adding the image of him sitting against a tree in the Betazed sun, calmly shattering her entire world view with a single impossible thought.

Will smiles dryly, with more than a hint of nostalgic affection. "Well, let's hope it keeps coming in handy while we're here. Wherever we are." He looks over her shoulder, out at the whirl of impossible strangeness outside.

She turns to follow his gaze. The view is breath-taking: a mesmerising, ever-moving show of pale but vibrant colour, ripples of pale blue and soft lilac lit through with warm white light, and it seems to go on forever.

"You have to admit, it's beautiful."

"It is that." Just like on the bridge, admitting to that explorer's temptation, his wonder is like a honey-sweet haze lapping against her mind and she can't help but smile. She can feel the definite tinge of his reluctance, in the moment before he tears his gaze away.

"I have to track down the Captain, try and figure out - whether we can figure any of this out. Keep an eye on things up here?"

"He was heading to Engineering," she says. Will gives her arm a grateful squeeze and strides out of the room.

 

*

 

It's heady, this feeling: the whole ship is so focused it's like a cacophony of sound suddenly falling into a single wave, a rise and fall that picks her up and carries her high, high, higher -

She closes her eyes and pictures the Traveler in her mind, finding the image through Will's thoughts where he's right there watching the impossible happen all over again. On the crest of that wave, with her focus and his so in line, she thinks she might actually see Engineering if she opens her eyes.

 

*

 

"Have the boy report to the bridge, Number One," Picard says. Will flashes her a look.

_Really?_

_He's come around earlier than I expected._ She can read Picard well enough now to know he has something particular in mind. His affection for Wesley is complex, knotted to so many facets of emotion: pride, definitely paternal with the weight of guilt at feeling that when it isn't his right, when it should be someone else; but there's duty and love for that missing father, too, a need to do right by the son that Jack Crusher can't raise himself. And Wesley is precocious, yes, but intelligent and focused and full of wonder, so there's the natural draw of one natural born explorer to another, too, regardless of age.

Of course, that Wesley is also very much his mother's son adds an entire suite of emotion of its own.

_He wants you to play along, I think,_ she tells Will.

_Even I can tell that._ And he does play his part, like a master, even when he's only wearing a straight face because he's laughing so loudly in her head, and she has keep her gaze firmly on her console to hide her own laughter. When the Captain finally says, "Well then. I'll have to make him an acting Ensign," Wesley's burst of incredulity and amazed joy flashes like fireworks. Will, sharing it, grins at her behind the Captain's back.

_Finally._

 

*

 

Deanna hates to admit she needs this, but that doesn't mean she doesn’t recognise when she does.

After the last few days, she definitely does.

A satin nightdress in her favorite pale pink, a warm blanket, a few simple candles and a cup of hot chocolate. She lowers the lights, puts the comm on emergency alert only, curls up in a chair and takes a slow, deep set of calming breaths; and, methodically, begins the private ritual of closing each layer of shields over her mind, one by one by one.

It's not difficult so much as time-consuming: rushing only makes it less effective in the end. She learned young how to do this, to close everything out to just the quietest hum, and she learned it better than a lot of her full-blooded Betazoid classmates because she was Lwaxana's daughter, and a Daughter, and half-Human with everything that gave her to prove.

In the years since she left home she's been grateful to her teenage self more than she ever expected to be, especially when she has to be around minds like Kosinski's with all their explosive effects on the mental atmosphere around her - and that even without the fading but still present memory of that vast, unknowable realm of thought...

She lets that go, lets the memory float out of her mind with another breath. Re-centering herself like this helps, and things will settle again soon enough - it's just a price she pays, as a Betazoid, to be in Starfleet, to have this life.

The door buzzing makes her smile and open her eyes, knowing who's standing outside as the stars streak past her window.

It's a price that's definitely worth it.

"Come in." She doesn't bother to turn around, just waits as he walks over to her replicator, listens to the subtle sound, and smiles at him when he sits down opposite her with a glass in his hands. The candle flames flicker on the coffee table between them.

"It felt like you could use some soothing company."

She smiles. Will's presence is only clearer with everything else pushed back out of reach and it's definitely soothing, as calm and warming as the hot chocolate cradled in her hands. "Thank you. You didn't have to."

He settles back, smiling back at her with a light caress against her mind. "Well, it's a tough job, but it has its rewards."

She leans into that light touch and tangles her own affection with his, like weaving their fingers together. Will leans back in return; deep-red-warm pleasure pulses through the tangle of their thoughts.

_You're finding this easier again lately,_ she thinks, still smiling behind a sip of chocolate, and she can feel his quiet surprise at realising the same thing himself.

"Getting back into practice, I guess." He must pick up how she feels at that, but she also knows he's still Human enough to need to be sure in words. "Is that - are we okay, with this?"

She could say _of course we are, don't be silly,_ or _well you can't deny it's helpful,_ or brush him off with a playful _can't you tell?_ But she doesn't, because they're more to each other than that. Because it's an honest, loaded question that costs him to ask it, and Will deserves for her to answer with equal honesty and equal understanding of what it means if the answer is _no_ … or if it's _yes._

So she thinks about it clearly, carefully, where she knows he can hear. How easy it's become to have those quick, silent conversations again when everyone could be watching but no one else can hear, whether they're side by side or decks apart. How just his asking for her help, knowing what she's capable of and needing her to fill in those gaps for him that no one else can, makes her feel like she's really, truly needed for who she is. How right it feels to call him _imzadi_ and mean every depth of it, even after everything. How comfortable it is to know he's next door when she goes to sleep, and how it's somehow not awkward if their minds forget the years and distance and tangle together sometime in the night.

How he can read her feelings just the way he used to, or he wouldn't be here now, and yet he's still making her answer this because he needs to be sure it's what she wants.

She knows he still wants her, _them_ , as much as he ever has; it's not as if he could hide it from her, or as if he'd even try. She knows that as much as this intimacy they've fallen back into isn't the same, it isn't entirely different, either; and especially here, among these people with this so private between them, it's dangerously close to a slippery slope ending in all kinds of pain - one they might already be sliding down.

None of that changes the answer in her heart, and that's the only one she could ever give him.

"You still feel like home, to me," she says, soft but sure. "That's never going to change."

Even in candlelight alone, she can see the love in his eyes when he smiles, not amused or teasing but that tender, private smile that was always and only hers. He holds out a hand and she doesn't hesitate in moving to join him on the couch, drawing her legs up and curling herself against him. Will wraps his arm around her shoulders and squeezes her close.

"I'm not surprised, you know." He runs his fingers down her arm. "You always made it easy."

She covers his hand with hers. "I meant what I said, in… that place. You have more talent than you give yourself the credit for."

"You liked it there, didn't you?"

"It was beautiful." She puts her head on his shoulder. "So far beyond us I can't describe it, but beautiful." It's slipping away from her still, like a dream that won't be remembered. She doesn't try to hold onto it, knowing there's little point; there's no way to contain even the dim memory of how it _felt._

Amusement flickers through Will's mind. She looks up at him, a little confused. "What?"

"The Traveler. I asked him why we've never seen anyone like him before. He called me arrogant, to think we're advanced enough… _interesting_ enough for that." He smiles wryly. She lets out a soft laugh.

"Well, it is."

"Yeah, I realised that. We've got a long way to go." His lips brush lightly against her hair, and she can feel the wonder and hope in him as he looks out at the stars. "Still. You think we'll get there, one day?"

She smiles and rests her head comfortably on his shoulder again. "Of course we will."

 

**


End file.
